All the Light We Cannot See and Just Mercy Win 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medals

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On Saturday evening, June 27, the winners of the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction were announced at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in San Francisco. This year’s winners are All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner/Simon & Schuster) for Fiction and Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (Speigel & Grau/Random House) for Nonfiction.

Indie booksellers have been champions of these two books from the start: All the Light We Cannot See was the #1 Indie Next List Pick for May 2014 and the winner of the 2015 Indies Choice Book Award for Fiction; Just Mercy was a November 2014 Indie Next List Pick and a 2015 Indies Choice Nonfiction Honor Book. This week’s announcement provides booksellers with yet another opportunity to promote the winners and all of the outstanding finalists for the 2015 awards. ALA makes Andrew Carnegie Medal long- and shortlists, downloadable bookmarks, tabletop posters, and read-alike guides available on the Resources Page of the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction website.

Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See masterfully and imaginatively recreates the harsh conditions in France during World War II and the strictly controlled lives of the military occupiers through the intertwined stories of a sightless French girl and a German soldier.

In Just Mercy, Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Institute in Montgomery, Alabama, delivers a passionate account of the ways our nation thwarts justice and inhumanely punishes the poor and disadvantaged.

In accepting their awards, Doerr and Stevenson expressed their appreciation for everyone who works to connect readers with books. Each received a medal and a $5,000 check.

In recognition of the impact and influence of the Andrew Carnegie Medals on readers outside the library, indie booksellers were represented for the first time on the awards’ selection committee by ABA President Betsy Burton, co-owner of The King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah.

To better align the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction with other major adult book awards and the key holiday sales and reading season, ALA plans to announce the six-title 2016 shortlist in October 2015 and the two winners at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in January 2016.

Indie booksellers will be represented on the 2016 selection committee by Cathy Langer, lead buyer for Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store.

Booksellers interested in joining the Twitter conversation about the awards should use the hashtag #ala_carnegie. The awards generate significant national interest and engagement; last year ALA noted 451,000 web pickups in addition to other media coverage.

The four other finalists for the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medals were Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín (Scribner/Simon & Schuster) and On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group USA) for Fiction; and The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (Heny Holt) and Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House) for Nonfiction.

Established in 2012, the Andrew Carnegie Medals are ALA’s first single-book awards for adult trade fiction and nonfiction. In the same way that the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz awards are uniquely respected in youth literature, the strong library connection sets these awards apart. They are co-sponsored by Booklist and RUSA (ALA’s Reference and User Services Association) and have been funded through a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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